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REJOICE! FOR THE UMBRAL LORD BEEN SLAIN!

The foul tyrant has fallen at the hands of Prince Lightbourne himself! Sunlight has returned to the free kingdoms, and the Umbral Lord's army of mindless thralls has been laid waste, most of them left dead on the field of battle.

...Yes, I said most. I guess some of them might have survived, but without the voice of their Lord to guide them, surely they are lost.

Why do you ask? You're not... you're not one of them, are you?

Are you?

After the fall of a notorious dark lord, the formerly mind-controlled thralls of his army must pick back up their lives, but few are ready to let go of the past. A stand-alone fantasy novella about the aftermath.

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The fog lifts from my mind for the first time since that hot winter day when I was a child, and everything I've experienced and lived through since spirals outward from me, from the core of my self, in ever-widening circles.

Now, I drop down into a puddle of mud, limp like a dirty rag. The puddle is a coppery color, brown mixed with the red of blood, same as the taste in my mouth.

Then, I stepped forward through the brown mud as I swung a serrated greatsword too heavy for my frame, and red blood sprayed through the air.

Now, I can't make my limbs obey me, but with the last ounce of my strength I manage to slide my cheek across the coarse earth so that I can draw in gasping breaths instead of drowning in filth.

Then, I was handed that serrated blade from the grim armory and the dark forges, and I marched off to battle in lockstep with a thousand others like me, merciless and untiring. Some of us had been selected and trained for battle, others for any of countless other tasks, but that day we all marched. We felt no desperation, no more than we felt anything—not fear, nor bloodlust, nor the weight of our steel—but we were aware that everything depended on this battle. The powers of the world had finally been united against us, and for the first time in his reign, the Umbral Lord might truly be at risk of being overthrown.

Now, I hear a voice wailing pathetically, despairingly. "No, no, no, no..." I think I recognize its sound, and an image of a wiry man with dark skin but remarkably bright eyes forms in my mind. Before we all became soldiers, he worked in the Dread Keep as a physician and a vet, and I must have passed him in damp corridors every day for years. I should know his name. Ordinarily, two people, acquaintances like us, we would know each other's names. But names are just one of so many things that simply haven't mattered for so long.

Then, I strode purposely through the Dread Keep as I moved from one task to the next, in wordless coordination with the others, the eternal presence of the Umbral Lord filling the void our free will had left behind in our minds. Feeding myself was no more than another necessary task. Sleep was simply the state I sank down into when there was no other need of me. The stink of decay and death, the sensation of the presence of evil, they were so thick in the Dread Keep that it feels now like we should have all choked on them. But they never gave us pause, not then.

Now, a scream penetrates my drowsiness, and I realize my face is slipping back into the puddle. There's no strength left in me to drag myself out a second time. All I can do is close my mouth and hope that perhaps I'll come to a stop before the mixture of mud and blood reaches my nostrils. Another scream, and I become aware of gleaming figures moving about in my field of vision. The sun rests low in the sky, and their armor catches its light, making them look every bit the Warriors of the Light their great hero proclaimed them to be. But slowly, my eyes focus and they become clearer. Although in spots their armor still gleams like silver, on most of them it's dented, bloodied and scarred. One of them passes by not twenty feet in front of my face, holding up a spear to which he has affixed their flag. He must have picked the banner up out of the mud, though, because its sky-blue field is darkened and soiled, as bloodied as the field on which we have just fought the final battle. I know their sigil--two rampant unicorns aiming their horns at a crown in the middle of the flag--but on this one I can only make out one horse, its horn separated from its head by a tear. The soldier pauses as he stands astride a shape on the ground, a woman. I don't recognize her, but she's wearing the same blood-red robe over black steel armor as am I. With one hand, she clutches in vain for her other arm, of which nothing remains but a stump squirting blood. Then the soldier standing over her plunges the tip of his spear down into her throat, and her hand spasms and then drops limply to the ground. It dawns on me only now just what I have been hearing. Screams are another thing that have meant nothing to me all these years--they've been background noise, no more. But these screams are being wrenched from those like me, as the surviving remnants of the victorious army roam the field of battle and finish off their fallen enemies. A feeling of lightness spreads through me. Are they coming for me as well? It would be a relief. I can see no other path forward that makes sense. But the soldier moves away from me, and I gulp down a mouthful of mud in my despair. He glanced my way--I'm sure he did--but I realize that to him, my unmoving body must look as dead as I already feel inside. I want to scream--at him, to him--but I have no breath, no words.

Then, I screamed, on that hot winter day they came and took me away from my parents. I don't think I stopped screaming from the moment they tore me from my mother's arms in our cottage in the woods until the moment the Umbral Lord pressed his fingertips hard to my closed eyelids to complete the enslavement ritual in the subterranean catacombs of the Dread Keep. Dozens of us had been gathered to undergo the ritual together, to make it as effortless for the Umbral Lord as walking from one end of the line of kneeling, weeping slaves to the other, pausing only briefly at each. As individuals, we meant nothing to him--it was only as an army that we were his strength. After he touched me, on the skin and deep inside my mind, I stopped screaming. I was his servant, and screaming did not serve him.

Now, I feel tears dripping from my eyes, drawing slow, itching trails down my face. I don't have to see them to know that they're red. The red of blood, the tears that leaked from every eye in the Dread Keep save those of the Umbral Lord himself for as long as I served there.

Then, too, I wept tears of blood--on the battlefield as in the corridors, alchemical laboratories and dungeons of the Dread Keep.

Now, all of those moments and experiences spin around me too fast to keep any one of them in focus. It's too much, just too much. As soon as one fragment of a moment takes shape in my mind's eye, it's washed away by the next. I don't even realize my body's gasping for breath until I feel pain like a giant fist squeezing my chest. I'm shaking so hard I'm actually moving more than I've been able to do of my own volition since the presence of the Umbral Lord left my mind and I dropped to the ground. Wonderful. There's no way to tell if there's anyone still around to notice that I'm alive and put me out of everyone's misery, though--the dark spots in front of my eyes are dancing so wildly they're making me nauseous, and I have to squeeze my eyes shut. I see one more flash of memory, perhaps an hour old.

Then, a disarmed enemy soldier had grabbed hold of my arms to keep me from cutting him down. I wonder, did he think a massive, muscle-bound fellow such as himself would easily be able to hold me off? Or had he already experienced the inhuman strength the Umbral Lord imparted to all his thralls, no matter their physical size? In that moment, it mattered little, because I saw a more direct way to finish him--I snapped my head forward and sank my teeth into the unprotected throat above his chainmail shirt.

Mercifully, that's when the giant fist around my chest finally squeezes so hard that everything goes black and I don't have to see or think about anything anymore.
 

The first thing I hear when I come to is a bird chirping its song. It takes me a long while before I can place the alien melody. In part because I feel like I'm still short a couple of seasons' worth of sleep, the endless whirlwind of memories in my head still present, but faded to a blissfully vague blur. And in part because my ears are full of mud and I'm not ready to see if my arms and hands work well enough to clean them out. But for the most part, because dark clouds have hung over these lands for so long that birdsong hasn't been heard here in years--and I'm talking metaphorical clouds, ones even brainless birds and brainless thralls could feel, but with the forges and alchemical fires in the Dread Keep burning without cease, unobstructed sunlight has been rare enough as well. Crows, ravens, the nastier carrion eaters, those are the only animals we've had in abundance in the wild.

My eyes feel swollen, but I could be imagining that from the effort it takes to open them. I roll onto my back and immediately regret it. The sun is certainly out now. As if I purposely want to make matters worse for myself, I try to lift my arm to shield my eyes. It obeys, and I suppose that should come as a relief, but every muscle screams as I tense it, and I take the easy way out, letting my arm drop and simply closing my eyes. A sound somewhere between a moan and a scream escapes me.

"Gods..." A coughing fit interrupts me, and my whole body aches from the shaking. "Godsdamnit, that's bright." Not the most insightful utterance for my first words as a free person, but I think part of me just wanted to hear my own voice, hoarse as it is, to know that it's still there.

I try to think back to before, to being a child in full control of my own body. It's all distant, but I remember there being plenty of scraped knees, and nearly tearing my arms off after deciding I could lift my father's axe and chop wood just as well as he could. All the minor pains that come with living and inhabiting a body. It's astounding how much you take those for granted until you spend a decade overstraining your body without ever feeling the consequences.

Maybe this is my body taking revenge its on me for all that now. It wasn't my idea, body. Please stop it. Please.

The first time I've consciously tried to bring back memories, and I had to go straight to my parents. Their deaths are so distant now, but at the same time feel so sudden and unreal. I don't know how to process the emotion of it as an adult, and end up feeling mostly dizzy and nauseous.

By the time I decide to give moving another try, the sun hangs low in the sky, and I'm only doing it because thirst is beginning to distract me from my perfectly good mindless misery. Losing control of my own mind is undoubtedly the worst thing that's ever happened to me, but at the same time, now it feels so much easier than accepting everything that's happened, or deciding what I'm supposed to do next. I never used to have to. I would have just lain here until the Umbral Lord told me otherwise.

As I pull myself up to a sitting position, gasping with the effort, my stomach contracts around the emptiness inside it. Thirst, hunger... they're not the all-encompassing presence of the Umbral Lord, but they seem good enough as anything to let guide me. Easier than having to think.

I try to stand, but a wave of dizziness overtakes me and I barely manage to drop myself back on my behind before I can fall flat on my face. Wow. Talk about losing control of your body. Nearly lost control of my bladder there. When I rub my face, my skin feels rough underneath my fingers, and I realize why when it comes crumbling off. I'm covered with a muddy crust, probably over most of my body.

When the spinning of the world begins to slow, I try again. I make no effort to stand this time, but only stretch out a little and slowly rotate on my butt.

The carnage I see is on an almost unimaginable scale. What must be thousands of bodies lie spread out as far across the fields as I can see. Many of them, mostly the ones in what was once sky-blue livery, have been literally torn to pieces. I don't see anyone else moving or any sign of life. Not that that's saying much, considering how long it took me to work up the nerve, but all things considered, I'm not going to waste effort hoping to find more survivors.

To the west, the smoky clouds emanating from the Dread Keep have vanished. My eyes pass the spot where the Keep is supposed to be before I realize it, and I gasp, turning back so fast I have to squeeze my eyes shut again for a moment. But when I open them, the smoke from the forges and laboratories is still not there. The sight, or lack of it, inspires a strange sensation of loss, though I know I should feel glad. I feel like I ought to be able to see the towers of the keep itself as well. That has to be wrong. They'd have extinguished the fires, but surely they can't have torn down that massive keep so quickly, can they? It seems impossible, but I know I should be able to see the towers.

I don't want to think about it, and my hunger and thirst are a great distraction, as they make every complex thought crumble in on itself. Turning my back to the place where the Dread Keep should have been, I crawl in the opposite direction on hands and knees. If there's drinkable water or anything edible to be found, instinct tells me my odds will be better the further away I get from that place.

Shuffling forward on hands and knees, I make my way across the field. My muscles protest every movement, but much of their complaint must be based on stiffness from lying in that cold mud all night, because the stiffness fades, leaving bone-deep fatigue in its wake. The effort to keep moving forward takes up every bit of focus I can muster, and I'm happy for it. Well, relative to the other emotions misfiring in my heart and brain, I'm happy for it.

How long I keep going before the bright green of grass shocks me out of my numb state, I don't know. Mostly, I let my head hang between my arms. It would take effort to lift it, and I know what I'd see--the trampled ground passing underneath me is bloody, and I'm forced to manoeuver around enough dead bodies that I don't need to see any more. There's a surprising number of faces I recognize. A result of the blinding clarity of my memories, perhaps. Everything is just there in my mind, unmuddled by any personal interests or distractions.

To say that a fog has lifted from my mind was perhaps wrong. My mind has always remained sharp--as far as I know, at least. I've never tested my mind as an adult before now, not free of his influence. But anyway, my mind was there all those years, forming its own reactions to events before then docilely conforming to the will of the master. It's the will that was the problem. Without a will of my own, my mind just waited for direction from an outside source.

I listen to my own rough breathing to give me something to focus on as I crawl ever onwards. Then, suddenly, something brushes against my nose. It bends easily, and it's the color more than anything that gives me pause.

"Grass..."

It's the bright green of new growth.

And it's beautiful. My head spins at the sight of the life of it, and I'm bombarded with memories once more. I never even realized how dead the land was for miles around, even though I helped unload the wagons bringing in the Dread Keep's food--confiscated from farms more than a day's travel away--every day for years. Even the most loyal, mindless thralls can't grow anything in poisoned ground.

It becomes harder to keep moving. I want to stop and... well, enjoy nature? I know I used to love the forest--those memories are from a time when experiences went hand in hand with emotions. The idea feels odd now.

But I push on, regardless. If I stop, I don't know if I'll ever be able to move again. My throat is dry like desert sand, and I'd bet everything I own in this world that the reason I'm wobbling even on all fours is dehydration as much as exhaustion. Not that I own anything in this world or any other, of course. But surely it's the thought that counts.

More grass brushes up against my face. It's soft and springy, and somehow, I'm smiling as I pant for breath--it tickles!

There's no dew on it, but the fresh green looks like it's laden with moisture, and I wonder if I can graze like cattle and suck it dry. How clean can the grass be, though, if it's growing out of soil that was still corrupted by the Umbral Lord's alchemies yesterday?

I decide I can move on just a little bit further.

Clouds drift by overhead, casting shadows ahead of me. I frown, squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. Or, I decide, it's also entirely possible that I'm seeing spots--the sun is about to set, too low in the sky to cast such shadows.

At some point I start passing the occasional green tree, but each time it takes a while to sink in, and I stop looking back at them over my shoulder when my first try makes me tumble over and I have to drag myself upright again.

At this point I'm no longer thinking. My instructions may be coming from primal instinct rather than from an outside voice, but that matters little. It feels right, it feels like it's always been.

I don't know how long I've been hearing the water before I realize what it is. When I do, it sounds like salvation. Despite the effort, my head comes up, and up ahead in the faint light of dusk I spy movement. Running water. A brook coming down from a hill on my left.

Guess I have something left in me after all, because I speed up as I move towards it, my hands grabbing hold of roots to drag myself up a slight rise, my knees shuffling on to follow.

At the brook, I pause for a moment to marvel at the glorious, crystal-clear water. Only for a moment, though.

Then I drop down flat on the bank and let my head sink underwater, ready to keep drinking until I drown.
 

Continued in the full novella, available from the follwing sellers: